‘That’s all,’ Johnny said, and then hesitated. ‘Except I think he’s going to win his election.’
‘We’re sure he is,’ Lancte said. ‘Unless we can get something on him. In the meantime, I’m in complete agreement with Chief Bass. Stay away from Stillson rallies.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Johnny crumpled up his paper cup and threw it away. ‘It’s been nice talking to you two gentle men, but I’ve got a long drive back to Durham.’
‘Going back to Maine soon, Johnny?’ Lancte asked casually.
‘Don’t know.’ He looked from Lancte, slim and impeccable, tapping out a fresh cigarette on the blank face of his digital watch, to Bass, a big, tired man with a basset hound’s face.
‘Do either of you think he’ll run for higher office? If he gets this seat in the House of Representatives?’
‘Jesus wept,’ Bass muttered, and rolled his eyes.
‘These guys come and go,’ Lancte said. His eyes, so brown they were nearly black, had never stopped studying Johnny. ‘They’re like one of those rare radioactive elements that are so unstable that they don’t last long. Guys like Stillson have no permanent political base, just a temporary coalition that holds together for a little while and then falls apart.
Did you see that crowd today? College kids and mill hands yelling for the same guy?
That’s not politics, that’s something on the order of hula hoops or coonskin caps or Beatle wigs. He’ll get his term in the House and he’ll free4unch until 1978 and that’ll be it. Count on it.’
But Johnny wondered.
2.
The next day, the left side of Johnny’s forehead had become very colorful. Dark purple –
almost black – above the eyebrow shaded to red and then to a morbidly gay yellow at the temple and hairline. His eyelid had puffed slightly, giving him a leering sort of expression, like the second banana in a burlesque review.
He did twenty laps in the pool and then sprawled in one of the deck chairs, panting. He felt terrible. He had gotten less than four hours’ sleep the night before, and all of what he had gotten had been dream-haunted.
‘Hi, Johnny… how you doing, man?’
He turned around. It was Ngo, smiling gently. He was dressed in his work clothes and wearing gardening gloves. Behind him was a child’s red wagon filled with small pine trees, their roots wrapped in burlap. Recalling what Ngo called the pines, he said: ‘I see you’re planting more weeds.’
Ngo wrinkled his nose. ‘Sorry, yes. Mr. Chatsworth is loving them. I tell him, but they are junk trees. Every-where there are these trees in New England. His face goes like this …’
Now Ngo’s whole face wrinkled and he looked like a caricature. of some late show monster. … and he says to me, “Just plant them.”‘
Johnny laughed. That was Roger Chatsworth, all right.
He liked things done his way. ‘How did you enjoy the rally?’
Ngo smiled gently. ‘Very instructive,’ he said. There was no way to read his eyes. He might not have noticed the sunrise on the side of Johnny’s face. ‘Yes, very instructive, we are all enjoying ourselves.’
‘Good.’
‘And you?’
‘Not so much,’ Johnny said, and touched the bruise lightly with his fingertips. It was very tender.
‘Yes, too bad, you should put a beefsteak on it,’ Ngo said, still smiling gently.
What did you think about him, Ngo? What did your class think? Your Polish friend? Or Ruth Chen and her sister?’
‘Going back we did not talk about it, at our instructors’ request. Think about what you have seen, they say. Next Tuesday we will write in class, I think. Yes, I am thinking very much that we will. A class composition.’
‘What will you say in your composition?’
Ngo looked at the blue summer sky. He and the sky smiled at each other. He was a small man with the first threads of gray in his hair. Johnny knew almost nothing about him; didn’t know if he had been married, had fathered children, if he had fled before the Vietcong, if he had been from Saigon or from one of the rural provinces. He had no idea what Ngo’s political leanings were.